Improving Access to Justice for Women and Girls in India
The Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice delivered a 2-year project in four states of India: Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh. The project ran from July 2016 to April 2018.
The project improved access to justice, rights and protection for women and girl victims of violence in the four states. This was done through knowledge transfer and the creation and implementation of innovative police training across the four states. The training focused on how the police can more appropriately and effectively deal with cases of gender-based violence and secure justice for victims. Thus, this would prevent victims from dropping out of the process during the early stages of the criminal justice system.
The training raised awareness and understanding of the barriers to justice for female victims and strategies to tackle associated issues. The focus is exclusively on women and girl victims of violence.
The training has been designed in collaboration with key stakeholders working in the area of violence against women and girls in India. There were active contributions from police officers, lawyers and NGOs, which enabled the creation of a dynamic training programme. The training programme was based on a train the trainer model, where those trained have gone on to deliver the programme to their peers. The training curriculum has now been implemented across many of the police academies in the four states.
Through continuous training we hope to create empowered and learned police officers who have the ability to perform their duties more effectively, without prejudice or discrimination, and with a greater understanding of how they can assist victims.
Our work targets policy, practice and seeks long-term change in procedures and training curricula, which in turn will support more effective utilisation of the law.
This website has been created to support key stakeholders, share resources and experiences as well as disseminate good practice and solutions.
The project was funded by the Magna Carta Fund for Human Rights and Democracy by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (British High Commission, India).
To find out more about the project visit out HKC India blog.
